Why staff retention should be your club’s top priority

Separating people from their jobs is difficult. There is only stress all around. In the movie “Up in the Air,” George Clooney worked full-time for a firm that spent the day terminating people, because their clients found firing their own employees distasteful. The last time I was separated, it was due to our largest client cutting their agreement by half. When the CEO called me down to his office the next day to discuss things, he said: “It’s not personal…it’s just business.” Yeah, right! Tell my wife that, or the credit card companies. Note: when it involves a person, it’s always personal!

This post has invested many words over time on the value of diligence in hiring. It is difficult. It takes time, a long time, to find the best person for any particular role. In this new world of work, while hiring remains a serious challenge, retaining talented staff can be just as taxing. In any leadership plan, developing a strong team has to be at the top of the list. This includes solid recruitment, proper care and attention, and continuing to lay out expectations for the role while sharing their scorecard.

In this In My Opinion post, I provide three thoughts about what retention can be. While being in charge has many priorities, locating and retaining good people should be high on the list. It all starts with outreach —the first communication —and it never stops. Developing good relationships with your team is just as important as the relationships with members. Think otherwise? Try to create world-class service as you spend your days working to prevent good people from walking out the door. Here are three thoughts on retention:

Retention is a matter of priority. No doubt, your daily to-do list can read like a book chapter: long and challenging. Certainly, when one accepts a leadership role, the daily to-do list comes as part of your welcoming swag. In 2025, retention should come before the A’s on that list. Communicating, spending time with, listening, really listening to every employee should be integral parts. Every meeting, every stop and talk in the clubhouse, should have with it the idea of strengthening the bonds between you and the team member. Retention should be a top daily priority.

Retention is a matter of time. There are the things you hope to do today, and then there are the fires that demand immediate action. Many managers I have known through the years place service to staff as a nice thing to do, “when there is time.” While that never really worked, leaders once thought it might, or worse, didn’t care. With 78 million Boomers aging out, and the fact that golf is a niche industry, the talent pool can be thin and shallow. Employees matter. While none of this is easy, it is essential to take time with your people every day. Note: the fires will continue, the work will never end. In the crusty middle is where you decide to manage the clock, investing your time. Remember, employers buy your time. Spend it extraordinarily well.

Retention is a matter of energy. It’s flat out hard to be a leader. Truly hard to be one who is known as a caring coach and mentor. Question: Who are the managers in your past you admired and why? Who are those former managers mired at the bottom? Chances are, they had energy for the things they liked, the things they knew, and only the staff they enjoyed being around. Leadership takes energy. It takes focus and a priority to grab the most important challenges in that moment. The challenge of caring should earn a large chunk of your clock. From service to members, connection to your managers, and daily communication with as many of the team as possible, energy is certainly at the core. It is hard to convey a positive eye for the property, the business, and every person associated with it without consistent energy.

Being a leader means playing no favorites. It means taking the time to hear about the next story from a staff member fresh into their shift, as you pass hour twelve. It is taking the time to write a thank you card to the staff member for staying late, for picking up the trash in the lot, or for doing an extraordinary job cleaning the golf carts. It is noticing, taking note, and connecting gratitude with the action. Retention is hard, hard work. It certainly works better than searching for new people every few months. Investing time is what an employee does. Every single employee. Retention should be at the top of your list…every single day.

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Jack Dillon writes the In My Opinion post. Jack is a speaker, a merchant, and today the buyer at The Happiest Place on Turf! He is also ready to speak at your next event or provide leadership advice for your operation and team. Go to www.youdontknowjackd.com or call Jack at 407-973-6136. Jack is available to help now. He lives in Orlando.